INHABITABLE WORLDS 



IS THE 



UNIVERSAL LAW OF NATURE 



AS SEEN l^ROM 



Material and Spiritual Standpoints, 



A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

Liberal League of Jacksonville, Florida, 

FEBRUARY 14, 1892, 

By WILLIAM FRETTS. 

Of ColnniMs. Warren County. PennsylYania. 



Copyrighted, 1892, by Wm. Fretts. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

J. T. WEIGHT, Printer. 

1802. 



HABITABLE WORLDS 



IS THE 



UNIVERSAL LAW OF NATURE 



AS SEEN FKOM 



Material and Spiritual Standpoints. 



A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

Liberal League of Jacksonville, Florida, 

FEBRUARY 14, 1892, 

By WILLIAM 'FRETTS.. 



% 



Copyrighted, 1892, by Wm. Fretfs. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

J. P. WEIGHT, Printer, 

1892. 



2X 3fyX 



I 



They might as well try to reach the shining sun, 

Or try to undo what nature has done, 

Or avoid the death that is to come, 

As to fight against nature and her son, the truth. 

WM. FRETTS. 






y\ 



WORLDS OF LIFE. 

Worlds beyond worlds in infinite extent, 

JLife upon worlds is but a natural event, 

Archipelagos of worlds fill infinite expanse, 

Multitudes of worlds are seen as we advance. 

r \Vorlds of life, Oh, what sense of delight — 

How our souls grow in love through this beautiful sight, 

"What a joyous pleasure as we delineate right. 

Those worlds of life so eternally bright, 

-See how they glitter, all colors of light, 

With their beautiful tints and sparkling white ! 

Oh, splendid worlds and homes .of life, 

What wonderful power guides your endless flight, 

Through eternal cycles of day and night. 

Oh, thou eternal one, whose presence bright, 

With grandeur fills all space with life, 

The eye that is forever bright, 

Unchanged through times eternal flight, 

When stars and worlds have ceased their light, 

Rolls on in Death's everlasting night ; 

Or with life eternal in love and light, 

And blessed by thee, O judge of right! 

The power that rules all worlds alike, 

We call you God, have we guessed you right, 

Or is it nature that rules our flight, 

And fills all space with glorious life, 

And gives us love and sense of right ? 

Worlds of life in your eternal flight, 

What power rules and guides you right ? 

The power that is, and ever bright 

With grandeur fills all space with life ; 

Whose thoughts vibrate in eternal flight, 

In endless death or everlasting life ; 

The power that rules we do adore, 

God or nature we know no more. fbetts. 



OTHER INHABITABLE WORLDS, 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

Astronomy is the most aficient of all the sciences. The 
study of the stars is doubtless nearly as old as man him- 
self, and hence many of its discoveries date back of 
authentic records amid the dim mysteries of traditions. 

During the past few years great advances have been 
made in astronomical science. This is due to the liberty 
of speech, the freedom of thought, the improvements in 
astronomical instruments and in methods of calculation. 

There is probably no science so vastly important and 
yet so little understood by the masses of people as 
astronomy. It is a grand study. It is above all others 
for it embraces the whole of the universe with all of its 
families of suns and planets. 

Now, it is very important that we should know that all 
of the general facts, various laws and principles which 
constitute the science of astronomy of today are based 
upon the most rigid mathematical or other scientific dem- 
onstrations. This is not only very important but it is 
also a truth which it is absolutely necessary should be 
well fixed in the mind if you would comprehend anything 
of the infinite speed, bulk and distance dealt with by the 
astronomer of today. This point well understood will 
form the basis from which we reason. We must all admit 
that every person reasons from his own standpoint of 
knowledge. That is, we must admit that the facts a man 
obtains during life form the basis from which all his per- 
ceptions, whether true or false, radiate. Thus, when 
facts differ, men differ. There are two sources from which 



we obtain facts. The one rests upon scientific basis ; the 
other rests upcn supposition, and that supposition, in 
many cases, as in the many forms of religions, rests on 
the traditions of a very ancient and superstitious people. 
"To uphold these misty legends requires an army of 70,000 
people in the United States alone, educated in all of the arts 
of argument, whose duty it is to sermonize in support of 
mythical hypothesis and in opposition to the truth. 

Christianity has, since its very infancy, made war 
against every thought that would elevate humanity, and 
has always given his Satanic majesty the credit of making 
all scientific instruments and discoveries. And today 
they say that modern spiritualism and all of its phenomena 
.are the works of their christian God made devil. 

Now it is a well known fact that supertition and preju- 
dice gives rise to an utter disregard of reason, and that 
millions of people have suffered death in all of its horrible 
forms, a sacrifice to a man made God. And today an in- 
finite number of the most fearful crimes are being com- 
mitted all over the world by people who labor under the 
false assumption that they enjoy a direct guidance from a 
God on high. These poor and misguided mortals, who 
through superstition and prejudice, use up their lives in 
making war against truth ; these believers of creeds and 
forms whose ancestors caused our scientific forefathers to 
be burnt at the stake, and made martyrs of the best brains 
that the earth had ever produced, who have ever pursued 
truth with fire, sword and slander, are still in the dark 
meshes of superstition, and still battling against truth with 
the same ingenuity as did their forefathers of the inqui- 
sition, who held and preached the hypothesis that the 
Bible contained all of the truth — aye, even all of the 
knowledge necessary for all mankind. 

But superstition and ignorance are retiring before the 



mighty power of truth as it rises from the burnt and' 
bloody battle-fields of the past. The iron clamps and 
shackles, the blackened post and ashes, the prison cells 
and dungeons, the burnt and mangled flesh of martyrs, 
are all unsilenced witnesses to the murderous attempt to 
strangle and subdue truth. But the assault has failed. 
Truth cannot be annihilated^ They may cover it with 
centuries of ignorance, superstition, blood, and crime, but 
it will shine forth as the glorious sun bursts through 
clouds of mist. Truth is as old as time and as indestruct- 
able as space. It is eternal. 

Now as to the other theory — that is, the scientific theory.- 
To explain this we must first inquire what is science itself. 
It is the knowledge of principles and causes; the compre- 
hension and understanding of truths or facts arrived at 
through the investigation of truth. Now a scientific- 
theory is a theory based on scientific facts, and the term 
scientific theory demands that there shall be fact and that 
that fact shall be proven. I will explain. 

The vortex hypothesis of the movement of the planets,, 
formulated by Descartes in the seventeenth century, never 
became a theory because it was proven false and discarded, 
but Sir Isaac Newton's hypothesis that gravitation causes 
planetary motion was proven true and thus became a 
theory. Ptolemy's hypothesis that the earth was the 
center of a system of eight immense hollow spheres of 
crystal never became a theory for it was proven false. 
The Copernicus hypothesis that the sun is the center of our 
solar system, that the earth is round, that it turns on its 
axis, and that the earth and other planets revolve around 
the sun, was at first bitterly denounced as visionary and 
even sacrilegious, but it was proven true and thus became 
a scientific theory, in accordance with which, the worlds go- 
rushing on around suns, driven by that infinite power that 



keeps all matter in the universe in rapid and perpetual 
motion. A power that is as old as matter and that has, 
during all the eternal past, moved planets around planets, 
and planets around suns, and suns around other suns, and 
suns around their sidereal systems, and every sidereal 
system in the universe around every other sidereal system, 
making a grand movement of&ll. This power is natural, 
and nature is the God of the universe and has no superior. 

Nature is all wise and knows the secret of all things and 
puts into action the most feeble as well as the most power- 
ful forces, and renders all its creations answerable, with- 
out anything being able to place any obstacle in the way of 
the manifestations of its powers. Nature is infallible and 
rules the universe with an unerring wisdom, and all mat- 
ter, and all mind are its willing and constant slaves, bound 
to it by the eternal and indestructable law of love, har- 
mony and obedience. And the same conditions will pro- 
duce the same results at the present moment, as they did in 
the infinite past, and as they will in the infinite future. And 
it is through this power and by the study of the laws of 
nature, that man has possessed himself of all the theories 
that give to us this modern civilization, and has elevated 
humanity in general so far above his former superstitious 
and ignorant condition. 

Oh, how the study of nature and her laws elevates the 
soul of man, and creates the all pervading desire to teach 
all mankind the grand and glorious beauties of nature's 
creation, that truth may take the place of ignorance and 
superstition. 

Nature is an infinite variety of forms and colors, visible 
and invisible, and is around us on every hand. Her 
works are as charming in the infinitely small as in the in- 
finitely great. 

In the field of the microscope we can see the little 



beauties of many colors, though born to live but a few 
moments of time, and so small that thousands would be 
required to fill the space of a cubic inch ; yet nature has 
arranged their little bodies in accordance with their 
necessities, with as much care as she did the beautiful birds 
of our Southern clime. You may see in the small dew drop, 
as it sparkles in the morning sun, all of the beautiful 
colors of the gigantic rainbow. Though born to live but 
a small part of a second, to be brushed into eternity by the 
gentle kiss of the morning breeze, yet nature has, in this 
minute spectrum, displayed all the sublime beauties of the 
great distant star clusters, where red and green blend their 
hues together and gold and sapphire intermingle their 
delicate tints in this microscopic world — the dew drop. 

Thus the study of science moves the gates of nature 
ajar, and as our eyes behold the gorgeous splendor in 
nature's laboratory, our souls become charmed with the 
sublime harmony of nature's grand and glorious truth. 

Nature is everywhere the same, and has made life so 
necessary on this little earth, that the smallest piece of 
matter, of suitable proportion, does not exist without serv- 
ing as an abode of living beings, and man has failed to 
find any one of those beings whose ancestry does not ex- 
tend back into the infinite past. Nature never has created 
one single, lonely, solitary object, but has always created 
them in infinite numbers. How absurd that nature 
should create but one man, one tree, one fish, one horse, 
one star, one little inhabited globe, or but one anything. 

Men have always thought themselves vastly more impor- 
tant than they really are in the infinity of the universe. 
They have had the vanity to pretend that all of creation 
was made for them, while in reality the whole creation 
does not even suspect their existence. We live in a 
world that is no exception among the heavenly bodies and 



vrhich has not received the least privilege. And why- 
should it ? The earth is one of the smallest planets in 
our solar system. Of the eight planets that revolve 
around our sun there are four larger than the earth. 





Mean distance from 


Mean diame- 




Names. 


the Sun in miles. 


ter in miles. 


Volume, earth's = 1. 


Sun, 


, 


866,400 


1,310,000. 


Mercury, 


36,000,000 


3,030 


0.056 


Venus, 


67,200,000 


7,700 


0.920 


Earth, 


92,793,500 


7,920 


1.000 


Mars, 


141,500,000 


4,230 


0.152 


Jupiter, 


483,000,000 


86,500 


1,303. 


Saturn, 


886,000,000 


73,000 


770. 


Uranus, 


1,800,000,000 


31,900 


65. 


Neptune, 


2,800,000,000 


34,800 


85. 



Mars with his two moons is the first planet outside of 
the earth's orbit, and is the nearest to the earth of the 
superior planets. Now here we have a world very simi- 
lar to the earth with all of its surroundings. Through 
the telescope we can see his land and water, his atmosphere 
and clouds, and his snow poles as they grow large in the 
winter and small in the summer. His days are of nearly 
the same lenoth as ours ; his year is nearlv twice as long. 
Mars receives a little less light and heat from the sun 
than the earth does. Now, the planet Mars may or may 
not be inhabited, but as far as we know the conditions are 
as favorable there for the existence of living beings as 
they are here. 

Venus is the first planet inside of the earth's orbit and 
the second one from the sun. She differs but little from 
the earth, except that she receives twice the light and heat 
from the sun that the earth does. Her days are about the 
same length as ours; her year is about 224 days. Through 



10 

the telescope we can see her mountains, her clouds and at- 
mosphere. 

To what end have these planets received years, seasons, 
months, and days, and why does not life come forth on the 
surface of these worlds, which enjoy like ours the benefits 
of nature and the same light and life-giving sun ? For it 
is from the sun that we receive all life, and the quality of 
that life can be rated by its source. Then let us compare 
our source of life with that of other heavenly bodies. 

In the first place there are three well defined classes of 
stars or suns. In the first class are the clear, white stars 
like Sirius and Vega. These are supposed to be the hot- 
test and the most luminous in proportion to the extent of 
their surface. In the second class are the golden, yellow 
or orange stars of which Arcturus and Capella are fine- 
examples. The third class Ave see deep orange and red 
stars like Aldebaran, Antares and Betelgeuse. 

Now the spectroscope informs us that our sun belongs 
to the second class or Arcturus type, and if we could view 
our sun in distant space we should see a star of golden 
yellow. 

Alpha in Centaur is our nearest neighbor. It is about 
220,000 times our sun's distance away from us, or about 
three years and nine months light distance away, and to 
place our sun at about half that distance it would shine 
with a brightness no greater than does Arcturus, which is 
about 180 light years, or about 11 J millions times our 
sun's distance away. Now Sirius is only about 17 light 
years away and to place our sun off the distance of Sirius 
it would shine with more than 1,000 times less light than. 
Sirius. Let us try to understand this fact. If we place 
a lighted candle near to an arc light of 1,000 candle power, 
the candle will represent our sun and the arc light will 
represent Sirius. Now, so far as we know, nature pro- 



11 

duces everything just in proportion to the conditions sur- 
rounding the object produced, the conditions being pre- 
viously produced by nature. Then what are the conditions- 
of life upon planets that receive their life from a source 
more than a thousand times greater than ours ? But 
Sirius is not the largest sun. We must go further. 

Through the efforts of very able astronomers, with the 
assistance of modern discoveries and improvements in 
astronomical instruments, we learn that Arcturus is more 
than 500,000 times larger than our sun ; that is, it would 
require more than 500,000 globes as large as our sun to 
make one globe as large as Arcturus. Our sun is about 
1,300,000 times larger than the earth. The earth is 
7,920 miles in diameter and the sun is about 8 6 6,40 O 
miles in diameter, but Arcturus is about 70 millions of 
miles in diameter, or large enough to fill the entire orbit 
of Mercury. But we are speaking of our neighbors^ 
Arcturus is but about 180 light years distant, we must 
go farther. 

But first what is meant by a light year. The velocity 
of light is about 186,300 miles per second, that is to say, 
benveen the beats of the pendulum of an ordinary clock 
light travels a distance . equal to eight times round the 
earth, or from the sun to the earth in about eight minutes 
and nineteen seconds a distance of about 92,793,500 miles. 
A light year is the distance which light travels in a year r 
that is, about 63,000 times the distance of the sun from 
the eaU*th, or about five trillions, eight hundred and forty- 
six billions of miles. 

Our nearest neighbor as I have already stated is Alpha 
in Centaur. This star is 220,000 times farther away than 
our sun, or about 20 trillions of miles, or as the French- 
man would say 20 thousand billions of miles, yet light: 



12 

travels this great distance in about three years and nine 
months. 

The Milky Way consists of between 20 and 30 millions 
of stars of which our sun is one of the smallest, and infinite 
space is filled with those star clusters like our Milky Way. 
Archipelagos of suns float isolated in the bosom of the 
heavens, and the heavens are infinite space — indefinite ex- 
panse — a void without limits— '-illimitable, infinite, indefi- 
nite. They are without shores, there is no frontier cir- 
cumscribing them — they have no beginning, no end, no up, 
no down, no right, no left, no top, no bottom, no length, 
no breadth. 

But there is an infinity of space which succeeds itself 
in every direction and is without circumference. In 
the bosom of this infinite space float rich clusters of suns 
like that which gives light and life to our earth. Suns 
whose numbers are as indefinable to man as space, go 
rushing through endless expanse with their trains of 
planets, and as they guide them in their respective orbits, 
they pour forth their magnetic streams of life on the sur- 
face of those worlds, nursing vegetable and animal life into 
existence, just in proportion to the conditions created there 
by nature. 

To try to describe space and its endless numbers of 
worlds would be a barren hope, but we will try to keep 
some of them before us in order that they may reveal to us 
:a part of the immensity of their value. 

Now the velocity of light is about 186,300 miles per 
second. Allow me then, if you please, by a figure of 
speech, to place ourselves on a ray of light and be carried 
-aw T ay in a straight line, taking the earth as our starting 
point. At the end of the first second we have already tra- 
versed 186,000 miles, At the end of the second 372,000. 
At the end of the third 558,000. We continue ten minutes 



13 

and we have traversed 111,600,000 miles. Passing on* 
during an hour, a da) r , a month, or during a whole year 
and even a century, on, on, without ever slackening our 
pace; on, on, through multitudes of suns ; on, on, through 
infinite space, indefinite expanse in the bosom of which are 
suspended archipelagos of worlds ; on, on, without stop- 
ping, let us penetrate the expanse in a straight line. For 
a long time we have gone l?eyond the last star cluster seen 
from the earth Avith the most powerful telescope, but on, 
on, add other millions and billions of trillions of years to our 
flight ; on, on, through other regions of space unknown and 
unexplored ; on, on, let us join centuries to centuries with 
the same rapidity of 186,000 miles per second and we 
should be able to float for an eternity without ever finding 
anything before us but an eternal open .space, in the bosom 
of which floats infinite numbers of worlds like the one in 
which we live. Worlds that receive their light and life 
from suns whose grand and glorious beauties in size, 
brightness and colors exceed all human description. But 
light is too slow, we must travel faster if we would penetrate 
space. In nature there is a movement incomprehensibly 
more rapid than light. 

The mind of man is a reservoir of knowledge and 
knowledge is powder. The human mind is supreme, and 
everything must give way before the mighty power of the 
intelligent mind. The mind of man is the soul of man, 
and the power of that soul is limited only in proportion to 
the amount of facts it possesses. The number of facts to 
be possessed is as unlimited as space. 

Then let us test the power of the soul. Let the mind 
represent to itself at one time the number of systems seen 
and the distance traveled on the ray of light, and then 
allow the soul to place itself on the other side of the most 
infinite expanse of which the mind has been able to conceive- 



14 

Thus in one instant place ourselves on the other side of a 
space so great that it would require light hundreds of 
3 r ears to travel the distance, only to admire the sublime 
beauty of multitudes of suns, surrounded like ours with 
their families of planets, and the indescribable wonders 
constantly rising on the other side of the heavens, and 
going beyond the distant oceans, without limits, without 
shores, and other worlds will reveal themselves to our 
eager gaze. Worlds will succeed to worlds ; heavens will 
succeed to heavens ; space will succeed to space, and other 
immensities to other immensities ; after deserts of expanse 
other deserts of expanse will open up on other voids with- 
out limits ; other oceans without shores ; other worlds 
without end ; space without bounds, without circumference ; 
carried away without stopping, without rest ; with the 
rapidity of thought the soul would continue its flight for 
eternity, without our ever being able to take away from 
the one or add to the other. The spirit would be arrested ; 
overcome with fatigue at the very entrance of infinite cre- 
ation. My dear friends we are no nearer a limit than if we 
had remained in the same place. For there is no limit. 
In truth the infinity of space and worlds is as eternal as 
time without end. 

I am asked what are the opinions of the able thinking 
astronomers of all the world as to there being other in- 
habitable globes. I can only answer for the few that I 
have had the honor of knowing, as " Mother Grundy " 
has much to clo with the opinions of many good writers. 
You will remember that I have stated that the earth's 
diameter is about 7,920 miles, and that more than 
1,300,000 earths would be required to make one sun, and 
more than 500,000 suns would be required to make one 
globe as large as Arcturus. 

Allow me then if you please, by a figure of speech, to 



15 

bring these mighty globes together and add to them 
Sirius, Antares, Betelgeuse, and let us pile globes upon 
globes until we have one mighty ball more than a hundred 
millions miles in diameter ; then let us dissolve this 
mighty ball into little grains of sand so small that they 
would be just perceptible to the natural eye. Now if we 
•could send one of these grains of sand to each inhabitable 
globe, when we should hav<* used up all the grains of sand 
in this mighty ball, we should be apparently no nearer to 
supplying the inhabitable worlds than when we first 
began ; no nearer than we came to the end of space. 
Again that grand and mighty truth comes fresh to our 
minds that the infinity of space and worlds are as eternal 
as the infinity of time without end. Let us not forget the 
lessons of today but return sometimes to think of nature's 
beautiful creation, and when tired with the dull duties of 
this world, let our souls be drawn away to mingle for a 
time with other worlds. And as we listen to the music of 
the spheres, rehearse each golden link of truth, for other 
mortal ears, for nature's truths must guide us through the 
eternal flights of years. 

TRUTH. 

Truth is an expression of nature's grace, 

Shining forth in every place, 

Eternal as both time and space, 

And must prevail in every case, 

No power can mar its beauteous face, 

Nor move it from its resting place ; 

No superstitious class of men, 

Can change it from its aim and end, 

But ever its beauty, love and grace, 

Will prevail in every case. 

WM. FEETTS. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



003 536 754 8 % 



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INHABITABLE 




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WORLDS. 



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